2012/01/31

BBC TV special aired 2/20/89. Interview clips and live acoustic performances of songs from Costello's 'Spike' album. Part 2 features "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror", and Elvis at the piano playing "Having It All," a tune he wrote for the "Absolute Beginners" soundtrack.Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6

2012/01/30

David Bowie sent his congratulations to new father Paul Weller after learning the rocker had named one of his twin boys after him. Weller became a dad again when his wife Hannah gave birth to two boys earlier this month (Jan12) and the couple has called them John-Paul and Bowie.The star's grown-up son Natt, from his marriage to backing singer Dee C. Lee, has now revealed the Heroes hitmaker sent the new parents a big bunch of flowers with his congratulations.Natt tells Britain's Daily Mirror, "He's really happy. David sent them a huge bouquet."

2012/01/28

The right part of the blog is very often "under " the main articles. But if you click on the article of the day, it suddenly comes back...So click on the last one if you want to see it and then "older post", etc.

2012/01/26

The right part of the blog is very often "under " the main articles. But if you click on the article of the day, it suddenly comes back...So click on the last one if you want to see it and then "older post", etc.

January 25, 2012 When Steven Patrick Morrissey was 13, he was watching The Old Grey Whistle Test, a BBC rock television show, when the New York Dolls came on. Later, he called it "my first real emotional experience." It was hardly his last: Growing up awkward, tall and shy in suburban Manchester, he was the archetypal kid who didn't fit in, writing poetry and letters to members of the British rock press, disagreeing articulately with their critics.

Years before, Manchester had lost out to Liverpool as Britain's provincial rock capital, but with the arrival of punk, it snatched the crown back. Morrissey joined a punk band called the Nosebleeds briefly, but he had other ideas. In May 1982, he read that a writer for Record Mirror named Johnny Marr, a guitarist who had been in a couple of bands, was looking for a lyricist. The two met and hit it off immediately, and a year later, they'd put together a band, had a couple of gigs, signed to London's Rough Trade Records and started releasing singles. It took a couple tries, but they eventually had a hit of sorts called "What Difference Does It Make?"

This wasn't pop music as we knew it, by any means, although a superficially similar band, R.E.M., was operating in the U.S.: an odd vocalist matched with a guitarist who could seemingly do anything. Unlike Michael Stipe, though, Morrissey didn't cloak his lyrics in ambiguity.

2012/01/23

Deluxe editions of Small Faces’ four classic ’60s studio albums will be released on May 7.

Small Faces (Decca, 1966), From The Beginning (Decca, 1967) and Small Faces (Immediate, 1967) will appear in two-disc format while their 1968 masterpiece, Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake, has been expanded to three discs. Each album has been remastered and will contain both the mono and stereo versions of the original tracks alongside a clutch of previously unreleased bonus material. MOJO’s Mark Paytress provides the liner notes and there are new interviews with surviving members Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones.

Where are the John Hellier's liner notes???

And just in case you’d forgotten how great this powerhouse of R&B, soul and psychedelia were, here they are tearing the place apart back in 1968:

The Maccabeesare three albums into their career (no mean feat for a modern day indie-rock band), and their latest release, Given To The Wild, has garnered a plethora of music industry critical acclaim. But expectations – their own and the outside world’s – made completion of Given To The Wild an intensive period of creativity that at one point seemed beyond their own collective talents.

The band’s guitarist Hugo White said: “Now we've reached a place of achieving what you want and making it a reality.

“Part of that was the production, which this time was predominantly us. The vision is ours, and that's something we never could have done before."

The Decemberists will release an expansive, 20-song career spanning live album We All Raise Our Voices to the Air on March 13 via Capitol. Recorded during four months of concerts on the eclectic Portland band's 2011 spring and summer tour, the live recording includes seven songs from The Decemberists' The King Is Dead project as well as five tracks from their 2005 album Picaresque and three taken from 2003's Her Majesty. One song, "Dracula's Daughter", has never been released on a Decemberist project but did appear on frontman/songwriter Colin Meloy's 2008 album Sings Live!. See the full track listing below.

Raise Our Voices to the Air also comes on the heels of the band's Long Live the King EP, a six-track collection of songs recorded during the King Is Dead studio sessions.Raise Our Voices to the Air track listing:

1. The Infanta (from Picaresque) 2. The Calamity Song (from The King Is Dead) 3. Rise to Me (from The King Is Dead) 4. The Soldering Life (from Her Majesty) 5. We Both Go Down Together (from Picaresque) 6. The Bagman's Gambit (from Picaresque) 7. Down By the Water (from The King Is Dead) 8. Leslie Ann Levine (from Castaways and Cutouts) 9. The Rake's Song (from The Hazards of Love) 10. The Crane Wife 1, 2 and 3 (from The Crane Wife) 11. Oceanside (from the Five Songs EP) 12. Billy Liar (from Her Majesty) 13. Grace Cathedral Hill (from Castaways and Cutouts) 14. All Arise! (From The King Is Dead) 15. Rox in the Box (from The King Is Dead) 16. June Hill (from The King Is Dead) 17. Dracula's Daughter (from Colin Meloy Sings Live!) 18. This Is Why We Fight (from The King Is Dead) 19. The Mariner's Revenge Song (from Picaresque) 20. I Was Meant for the Stage (from Her Majesty)

2012/01/18

Ace music journalist John Robb (not a man to say he likes something when he doesn't) has this to say about the new Stranglers album:

"This is The Stranglers as we want them. Unapologetic, hundred per cent pure Stranglers. Stranglers who combine that urgent, inventive energy with a textured, perfumed melancholy. There is intelligence and playfulness here and an originality that has always made them impossible to place.

Having enjoyed reading Suzie Tullett’s debut novel, I was delighted when she agreed to this interview.

Q, Without giving too much away to our readers, could you give an overview of the book in your own words please.

Three men on two scooters (a vintage Lambretta and a Vespa) heading down the country to Brighton…Three women and a heavily pregnant belly in hot pursuit – all squashed into a classic, Union Jack roofed mini… With an off duty Police Officer bringing upthe rear… And with musically themed chapters, it even has its own soundtrack.

In ‘Going Underground’,the hero and heroine are Jonathan and Tracey Parkes, a couple who’ve spent years trying to get pregnant. And having finally achieved what once seemed the impossible, we’re introduced to them just two weeks before the baby’s due date. Of course, Tracey can’t wait to be a Mum, whereas Jonathan is something of a reluctant Father-to-be, leaving Tracey no choice but to turn private investigator in a bid to find out why. However, in doing so she unwittingly sets off a chain of events that take Jonathan back to his roots in an attempt to finally face up to his past;events that could ultimately signal the end of their relationship.

Q, Also, what are your top five ‘mod’ songs?

This is a difficult one considering there are so many to choose from and I do have rather an eclectic taste when it comes to songs.

We at www.elviscostello.com find ourselves unable to recommend “The Return Of The Spectacular Spinning Songbook” as the price appears to be either a misprint or a satire.

All our attempts to have this number revised have been fruitless so we are taking the following unusual step.

If you want to buy something special for your loved one at this time of seasonal giving, we suggest, “Ambassador Of Jazz” - a cute little imitation suitcase containing ten re-mastered albums by one of the most beautiful and loving revolutionaries who ever lived – Louis Armstrong.

The box should be available for under one hundred and fifty American dollars and includes a number of other tricks and treats.

Frankly the music is vastly superior.

If you should still want the component items in the above mentioned elaborate hoax, they will be available separately at a more affordable price in the New Year, unless you are one of those pirates who imagines they are evangelists or that other people’s rights absolve their own thievery, in which case this is between you and your dim conscience.

Tickets are currently on-sale for the Spectacular Spinning Songbook appearances in the U.S., U.K. and Europe during April, May and June of Spring of 2012. More dates will be announced in the very near future.

2012/01/12

Grotty Camden. Grotty Thursday morning. Graham Coxon sidles out of the café, lights up a cigarette and surveys the bit of London that – by default, he insists – has become his "patch" for the best part of 20 years. "I don"t like places," he says. An awkward smile lets you in on the fact that he knows that what he has said sounds a little absurd. "I tried Kent for a year, while my house was being done up, but it wasn"t any better. So, there it is."

Cpt.Stax said...: you know Im very "hard" on weller sometimes :) but I think here's just a matter of coincidences.

Woodcutters' is clearly inspired by the same style (Diddley mostly) as was "Magic bus", but if details of this video are correct, here pete is playing it in 1996, ie after Stanley road. I never heard the Who or Pete playing magic bus this way, so (I might be wrong) it is possible that its Pete actually taking inspiration from Woodcutters' to play Magic bus a little different.The start is absolutely similar.

2012/01/07

Recorded at the O2 Academy Islington on the 23rd July 2011 few hours after, and only a few miles away from where Amy passed away, this is The Selector with Amy Winehouses' - 'Back to black'. Already pressed on 7" vinyl, this is a track on the new single from The Selecter due on 31st July. As Pauline says on this clip, Amy did several Two Tone songs and this is a return of the favour. (Notes from the original uploader, thanx a lot)

You know what I mean, a "good" friend came home with an awful rap or R'n'B second class compi for Xmas and he gave it to you, you had to listen it all night long... yet again Mom offered you a brand new tie with the perfect pair of socks (but you have seven versions of the same set already...)?

A friend of mine, and it's a true story, told me on the phone that his sister offered him the same record as last Xmas! And...it was Muse's Hullabaloo on CD, gosh...He was slightly disappointed... ;) Does she hate him? ;)

Nick Churchill is the new X-Man and he has super powas!

Don't worry there's a solution and you can still find a classy book to repair that mistake. ;) Nick Churchill's book Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth is there to heal the pain! Nick's book is absolutely amazing if you're a Beatles fan and if you're a Bournemouth fan - and even if you're neither a Beatles nor a Bournemouth fan!

We've all seen many pictures, a billion Beatles' photos, but believe me, you never saw these ones before... Imagine the Fab Four with the delightful "French" sixties pop girl, Louise Cordet! She's been educated at the French lycee of Kensington and her father was a World War 2 hero... She is in the book, torn between the Beatles and another sixties band, Gerry and the Pacemakers! She's been a one hit wonder since 1962.

And that's right at the start. The entire book is a surprise. All book long you can discover new photos which came from outtaspace Bournemouth! The Beatles with BJ Kramer and the Dakotas to remind us how fresh they looked and how fragile they were at that time, running with many bands to stand still... And it wasn't sure at all... They look like very young kids having a big party and who don't know when and where it's gonna flop...You can see them on the roof of a Bournemouth theatre, playing with toys to promote a television show. It's just the beginning of a flashy new England after all the post-War years in black and white...

The book is full of anecdotes which prove the Beatles' impact. Did you remember that the Dowlands Brothers had a minor hit with a cover of All My Loving? Did you remember that the first film of the Beatles seen on American TV had been shot in Bournemouth? You can also sense the very beginnings of Beatlemania and that very beautiful event - the birth of an English youth cult...the Mods phenomenon is not so far away and first-generation Bournemouth Mods recalls their run-ins with the Beatles!

That's what I see in this awesome work and collection of photos, the birth of the right to be young, the right to talk, express yourself, dance, have some fun, have a personal life. That's the real point here. So NIck's Fantastic labour of love is a great job. This is definitely a must have for any fan of the Beatles, of music, of the sixties or, indeed, any mod!

Cadenza - "It's an album I've wanted to do for a year or so. In fact it started out as an acoustic EP, but we quickly realised that I had far too many songs so thought we may as well go the whole hog. It's not an acoustic album per se, but every song is based around the acoustic guitar. A quieter set of tunes. It's a very personal record, but topical too. As with the other albums, no two songs are the same. It's a bit of a concept album! I'm glad to have made it, it'll be out early 2012. I'm already planning the next one, I wanna make a noisy racket!"